


Good Memories

by eticatka



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Housewarming, Moving, Presents, Robin Ellacott's Green Dress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-22
Updated: 2021-01-22
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:01:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28919487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eticatka/pseuds/eticatka
Summary: From a prompt: "Cormoran is helping Robin move and finds the ripped green dress in a bag."
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 15
Kudos: 56





	Good Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Greenie (hidetheteaspoons)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidetheteaspoons/gifts).



> Greenie's prompt ran as follows:  
> "Cormoran is helping Robin move and finds the ripped green dress in a bag. He sneakily takes it and has it fixed, and gives it to her. What happens next is up to you!"
> 
> Many thanks to KatieStarling and RaeNonnyNonny on Denmark Street Discord for helping me navigate the dressmakers' world of London! 
> 
> Disclaimer: I have a very limited idea of how the real eastate functions in the UK, so forgive me any inconsistencies! Also, sorry for the typos if there are any, I was in such a rush :D

“Need a hand?”

Strike entered Robin’s bedroom, now almost empty of anything that made it specifically hers. All her possessions were already placed in a few cardboard boxes, meticulously numbered and catalogued. Strike mentally compared them to his belongings that were rescued from Charlotte’s place exactly five years ago: Robin had just a little more. She would probably stay here longer, had her landlord and friend Max Priestwood not announced he was selling the place and buying a larger house together with his fiancé. The couple were planning children and, probably, one more dog to keep Wolfgang company. As much as Robin regretted this decision, she saw it as a sign she had been waiting for. There was still a significant sum left of the money Matthew paid her, and with a little help from Ilsa’s two friends, a mortgage consultant and a real estate agent, Robin managed to find a flat she both liked and could afford.

As a devoted best mate, Strike offered Robin his help with packing and moving. She declined the former politely, but accepted the latter with genuine enthusiasm: she needed someone to carry the boxes from her room to the boot of her Land Rover and from the car to her new flat. However, he ended up helping her through the entire packing process. It was Strike’s idea to number the boxes to make the unpacking easier; he suggested a few tips for clothes folding; most importantly, he entertained Robin with numerous stories of his own wanderings.

Now most of the boxes were already in the car, and Robin was trying to fill the last box with the “almost never used clothes and shoes”, as she labeled them. Those were the clothes even Strike didn’t know how to fold without creasing them.

“Wha– Er, no, thanks.” Robin answered. “I wonder do I need to take it all? I could give it to some charity. I can’t imagine an occasion for these heels. That case was a one-off. Or – what’s in this bag? Oh, never mind. Fancy some lunch? I need a break anyway.” She suddenly got nervous and rushed out of the room without hearing Strike’s answer. He heard a bathroom door shut.

Perplexed, Strike approached Robin’s closet. His intuition and curiosity won over the respect for Robin’s privacy; he told himself he was looking for the object that had caused his best mate’s anxiety. He saw a simple paper bag on the floor, slightly crumpled, reached his hand and tentatively opened it.

_I should’ve guessed._

Here it was, the luxurious green fabric he knew so well. The Cavalli dress he gave Robin after the first case they solved together, but before he knew she would stay forever at his – _their_ – agency. Seeing her modeling his dress in the posh boutique was one of his favourite memories of those early days, and so was the last time he saw her wearing it, during the Chiswell case. Did this dress bring Robin not such pleasant associations? Why would she storm out of the room? And why on earth did it lie in a paper bag, folded carelessly, and not hung in the closet?

Not fully knowing why he was doing it, Strike took the dress out of its bag. It had hardly any creases. In fact, he was almost sure she hadn’t worn it for a long time. Probably she didn’t like it as much as he did. She could consider it inappropriate, after all these years. Obviously, she had no idea how much Strike liked this dress on her (or, more precisely, how much he’d like this dress _off_ her). Or, still worse, she did, but had no intention of reciprocating. Or –

 _This is why_. The zipper was fastened, but a large and ugly slit ran all the way next to it. The dress was ruined, and, evidently, Robin couldn’t bring herself to have it fixed. A few calculations brought Strike to conclusion that this had to be Matthew. He frowned, imagining the passionate not-yet-ex-husband ripping the dress off Robin, exposing her marble skin and everything else that had been only his to see. _The wanker._ He ruined their marriage and left his ugly mark on the object that made Robin much more than a dull accountant’s wife.

Strike hugged the dress to himself, a plan suddenly emerging in his head. He only had to be cautious.

Judging by the sounds, Robin was already in the kitchen, warming their lunch.

“Robin?” Strike shouted. “I’ll nip out for a second – I’m out of fags. Be right back, okay?”

She shouted back an affirmation, and Strike quickly went outside. He gave himself a mental pat on the shoulder for driving to Earl’s Court and not taking the tube: his initial reasoning was to have some spare space in the car in case Robin’s boxes didn’t fit in the Land Rover. He made sure Robin couldn’t see him in the window, and opened the boot of his BMW. There was an empty plastic bag there, seemingly clean. Strike carefully placed the dress there, closed the boot and stood next to his car, smoking and counting the minutes till he could go back in without causing suspicion.

*

“Al, it’s me. Have a second?”

“Hi bruv,” Strike’s half-brother sounded colder than usual, and Strike knew why. “You alright?”

“Yeah, totally. Listen, I know the things haven’t been smooth between us lately but –” Strike exhaled the smoke into the cold spring air. “I need your advice.”

“Sure.”

“Where do you repair your clothes?”

There was a pause.

“Well, normally, I don’t.” Al’s voice tingled with mild bemusement. “A good question, actually. Never thought about it.”

“What d’you do if you rip your trousers by accident?”

“Honestly? I give them to charity and buy new ones. There are those organisations that sort your clothes, and if something is ruined completely, they recycle it. If there’s a chance to repair it, they do. There are many people who don’t have any trousers at all, so they’d be happy to get any.”

“Okay.” Strike dragged on his cigarette again. “Listen, Al, I need to repair a shit-expensive designer dress. A Cavalli. Torn at the zipper. Do you have any idea–?”

“Christ, bruv, who did you rip _that_ off?”

“I didn’t. It’s Robin’s.” He knew he sounded like an idiot, but the last thing he wanted was to disclose the story of the green dress to Al Rokeby. “Al, it’s not that easy to explain. I just want to help her, but I need something upmarket. I tried a dressmaker’s not far from her old flat in Earl’s Court, but they nearly fainted when they saw the Cavalli tag.”

“I see. There’s nothing about you and Robin that’s easy to explain.”

“Al.”

“I wish I could help you, bruv, but I don’t know much more than you. Have you tried googling any luxury dressmakers?”

_Who needs Google when you have a high-society half-brother?_

“Er, no. Right, I should try it. Thanks, Al. Talk soon.”

He rang off.

Robin was usually much more confident with the search engines. She always teased Strike about being “stuck in the stone age” and having digital intolerance. In this case, however, he couldn’t resort to her help and had to face the monster himself.

He tried several word combinations, none bringing him the result he needed, until, finally, he landed on a site called “Alterations Palace”. It seemed to offer any dressmaking service in the world and, most importantly, promised “fair and reasonable” prices. Feeling lucky, Strike scribbled down the address in Mayfair, made sure the place was open on Saturdays, and set off.

*

Robin unpacked more quickly than she expected. That was the good thing about not having many belongings. Her clothes looked a little lonely in her new spacious wardrobe, and she didn’t feel like buying anything else in the near future, at least not until she got rid of those she didn’t wear anymore. She thought of her green dress, stuffed in a paper bag in the back of the closet, the most controversial piece of clothing she owned. She adored this dress and how it had looked on her. On the rare occasions she had worn it, it felt like becoming someone else for a while, as if the dress unleashed the side of her personality which hid away otherwise. Confident. Beautiful. _Sexy_.

And yet, there were too many difficult memories about the green dress. For Robin, it symbolised the unspoken rivalry between the man she had loved before and the man she realised she loved now. There was Strike, who gave her this dress, probably without giving it a special thought. It was funny to think that he could fancy her as a woman. Everything that happened since Robin’s 30th birthday was just an evidence that he was pretty comfortable with being _just best mates_ with her. And there was Matthew, who hated Strike’s guts, who hated this dress because of its obvious sexual subtext. He believed a man could give a woman a dress only if he wanted to take it off her. Ripping the dress wasn’t just a part of his passionate foreplay. It was a petty revenge on Strike, who presented the dress, and on Robin, who accepted the present.

Robin rummaged in her closet and took out the bag with the dress. In any case, she had to take a look at it before making her final decision.

The bag was empty.

*

“You must be –” _Fucking kidding me_ , Strike almost said upon hearing the price for mending the dress. He braced himself. “A true professional.”

He knew it would cost him an arm and a leg, but the figure he was told exceeded his wildest fantasies. While the small bespectacled man explained him the technical details of “rescuing” the dress, as he called it, Strike tried to calculate how much would it cost him in Doom Bar’s, Benson & Hedges packs, taxi rides and, finally, perfume bottles.

Strike sighed. He owed Robin countless birthday and Christmas presents. He wasn’t going to compensate it all by giving her the same present for the second time, but at least he could show her how much he cared. This wouldn’t be a reckless waste of money; in the end, not money mattered, but the thought, the emotional investment. He wanted to show her how invested he was in their relationship, how important their shared memories were to him. He hoped this dress would bring her only happy memories from now on.

“Can you do it today?” Strike asked. “It’s quite urgent.”

“Oh, certainly, sir,” The man tapped at his calculator and turned it to Strike. “This would be your final price.”

Strike grunted and reached into his coat for his wallet.

*

Robin’s housewarming should have been as different as possible from that circus of a party she had with Matthew. At last, she had enough friends of her own to celebrate her new home. Everybody who was at her birthday dinner was invited, in addition to Eric and April Wardle, Pat and her husband, and, after short hesitation, Shanker and Alyssa.

Robin even asked Max for his casserole recipe. The dinner where she had tasted it for the first time was a nightmare, and she was fully determined to allocate some pleasant memories to this dish. The serving she made was twice as big as Max’s, but it smelled deliciously. She hoped Strike would like it. In fact, she hoped everybody would like it, not only Strike, but for some reason (she knew too well for what reason) his opinion mattered the most.

Robin had just finished dressing in her new grey jumpsuit when someone rang the door. Surprised, she saw Strike in the peephole.

“You’re not the last to arrive!” she chuckled, letting him in. “Have you slept in my garden?”

“Happy housewarming, Robin,” Strike said instead of commenting on her teasing. He handed her a large paper bag. “By a way of a present. I hope you like it.”

Intrigued, Robin opened the bag and nearly dropped it on the floor. There was her green dress, perfectly whole and clean.

“Strike, what the –”

“I’m so sorry I had to steal it. I just couldn’t help it. You wearing this dress is probably my favourite view in the world.”

She gasped.

“Is it?”

“Yeah. I thought it was unfair to keep it like this. It should bring you new memories, better ones.”

Robin couldn’t hold back the tears.

“Strike, it must’ve cost you a fortune!”

“Sod the fortune. I’d sell my soul for you if I had to.”

She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, her best mate, her partner, the man she loved with everything she had.

“I came earlier, so that you could change in it, if you like,” Strike whispered to her ear.

“Would you like me to?”

“Yeah. And you know what else?”

“What?”

“I want to take it off you when the party’s over.”

**Author's Note:**

> I did find a luxury dressmaker's located in Mayfair, but I changed its name just in case :D


End file.
